Nature Unbound IV – The 2400-year Bray cycle. Part B

In Part A, we established the existence of a ~ 2400-year climate cycle, discovered in 1968 by Roger Bray. This climate cycle correlates in period and phase with a ~ 2400-year cycle in the production of cosmogenic isotopes, that corresponds with clusters of solar grand minima at times of abrupt cooling and climate deterioration. The relationship between solar activity and cosmogenic isotope production during the past centuries confirms the ~ 2400-year solar cycle as the origin of the climate cycle.

The solar variability 2400-year cycle

Radiocarbon dating was developed by Willard Libby in 1952 based on the idea that biological carbon samples that reflected atmospheric 14C/12C proportion at the time they were alive would progressively become 14C depleted due to the isotope’s radioactive decay, and thus would provide a clock to measure elapsed time. But Libby warned that there was no guarantee that the 14C/12C ratio had been constant in time. Therefore, a considerable effort has been ongoing since the 1960s to determine the proportion of 14C in the atmosphere over past millennia. The resulting calibration curve (figure 57) is used to convert radiocarbon dates into real time dates. But the radiocarbon clock does not run at a constant speed as the real-time clock does. There are times when the radiocarbon clock runs faster and times when it runs slower, creating bumps in the calibration curve (figure 57, ovals and arrowheads). That the radiocarbon clock runs faster (Y values decrease faster in figure 57), implies that the 14C/12C ratio is deviating upwards, as samples with more 14C are more recent. This means that either 14C is being produced at a higher rate, or total CO2 is decreasing while 14C is not. Most scientists believe the first explanation contributes more to the observed changes because the proportion of 14C is so small in the atmosphere (~ 10–12) as to require very large changes in total CO2 to produce the alterations that can be explained by small increases in 14C. And we know from ice core records that CO2 changes have been relatively small during the Holocene. A carbon cycle model has been used since the late 1970s to account for the effect of CO2 variations on radiocarbon dating. Thus, the best explanation for the acceleration observed in the radiocarbon clock is that the production rate from cosmic rays in the atmosphere increased due to a decrease in the solar magnetic flux that takes place when the Sun is in a prolonged period of low activity known as a grand solar minimum (GSM). This conclusion is supported by the same variability shown by a different cosmogenic isotope, 10Be, whose deposition does not depend on the carbon cycle.

Figure 57. Radiocarbon decay and solar activity. The radiocarbon calibration curve (IntCal13) is unrelated to climate change and obtained through the efforts of hundreds of researchers over decades to provide an accurate way of measuring the time elapsed since a biological sample stopped living. The calibration curve presents periods of time in the past, when there was a noticeable deviation from linearity (ovals and arrowheads). Five of those periods (ovals) are separated by multiples of ~ 2450 years delimitating a 14C cycle. Solar activity reconstruction from cosmogenic 10Be and 14C isotopes shows that those periods correspond to periods of unusually high isotopic production interpreted as grand solar minima like the Spörer and Maunder minima. Those periods correspond precisely to the lows of the Bray climate cycle (blue bars). Source: A.K. Kern et al., 2012. Palaeo. 329–330, 124–136.

From the early 14C production data available in the late 1960s Roger Bray noticed a correspondence between climate change and radiocarbon production (Bray, 1968), thus defining both a climate cycle and a solar variability cycle. This caused him to propose that changes in solar activity were responsible for the climatic changes. The solar cycle can be clearly seen in the radiocarbon data from the ~ 2450 year spacing of higher 14C production at 12800-12650, 10300-10100, 5350-5200, 2800-2650, and 600-400 BP, corresponding to all the Bray lows in the Holocene and Younger Dryas except B4, that lacks a similarly noticeable 14C production signature (figure 57 ovals).

The Bray solar cycle was again identified by J. C. Houtermans in his PhD thesis of 1971, and has since been confirmed multiple times independently. The uncertainty regarding the position of B4, that should fall around 7.8 kyr BP, together with very low solar activity at around 8.3 and 7.3 kyr BP, plus the presence of other periods of very high 14C production between 11.5 and 9 kyr BP (figure 57 arrowheads), has caused different studies to differ in the length of the Bray solar cycle between 2200 and 2600 years depending on the methodology used. The best studies however establish the length of the Bray solar activity cycle between 2400-2500 years, and thus it is commonly referred as the ~ 2400-year cycle. In the late 1980s Sonnet and Damon despite being aware of Bray’s and Houtermans’ studies decided, against established custom, to name the cycle not by the name of its discoverer, but as Hallstattzei (later Hallstatt) for a late Bronze-early Iron cultural transition in an Austrian archeological site during the cycle’s B2 minimum, 2800 years ago. The inappropriateness of a human cultural name from a particular period for a solar cycle that has been acting for tens of thousands, and probably millions of years (Kern et al., 2012), plus the injustice of ignoring its discoverer, demand that the cycle be properly renamed as the Bray cycle.

One peculiarity of the ~ 2400-year solar cycle is that it modulates the amplitude and phase of the ~ 210-year de Vries solar cycle (Sonett, 1984; Hood & Jirikowic, 1990). The amplitude of the de Vries cycle is maximal at the lows of the Bray cycle (figure 58), and minimal at mid-time between lows, to the point of becoming imperceptible.

Figure 58. Modulation of the de Vries cycle by the Bray cycle. Sunspot activity reconstruction from 14C data (top panel) and its wavelet spectrum. Left and right-hand panels depict 2D and global wavelet spectra, respectively. Upper and lower panels correspond to period ranges of 500 – 5000 years and 80 – 500 years. Dark/light shading denotes high/low power. Source: I.G. Usoskin 2013. Living Rev. Solar Phys. 10, 1. It is known since 1984 that the ~ 208-year de Vries solar cycle is strongly modulated by the ~ 2400-year Bray solar cycle such that the amplitude of the de Vries cycle is maximal at the lows of the Bray cycle and minimal in the middle of two lows, to the point of becoming unnoticeable. Wavelet analysis of solar activity reconstructions show the 208-year power accumulating close to the lows of the Bray cycle (blue bars). The cause of this modulation is unknown, but indicates that both cycles are not independent.

This property of some of the short solar cycles, of being modulated by the long cycles can be observed in the sunspot record of the past 400 years, where we observe that both the de Vries and centennial cycle lows display progressively more activity as we get farther away from the Bray and millennial lows, becoming less conspicuous with time (figure 59). This is how solar activity has been increasing for the past 400 years, by reducing the periods of below average activity, due to this modulation.

Figure 59. Modulation of the short solar cycles during the telescope era. Sunspot group number (black curve) reconstructed back to 1610 AD. Red curve, empirical fitted function for the centennial solar cycle with a period of 103 years described by B. Tan, 2011. Astrophys. Space Sci. 332, 65-72. The centennial cycle (orange scale) presents lows of decreasing intensity at 1700, 1805 (SC5), 1910 (SC14), and 2015 (SC24), going from the millennial low at ~ 1600 AD to the millennial high at ~ 2100 AD. The pentadecadal cycle is also shown as shorter orange bars between the centennial lows. The modulation of the de Vries cycle (blue scale) can also be seen as the low of ~ 1675 AD is much lower than the low of ~ 1885 AD. It can be expected that the low of ~ 2095 AD should barely be noticeable. Thus, moving forward from the Bray low at ~ 1500 AD, we see more solar activity at each successive centennial low.

The de Vries cycle modulation by the Bray cycle allows the identification of its lows during the last glacial period, when drastic climatic changes obscured the ~ 2400-year climatic cycle, and made the cosmogenic record less reliable. Adolphi et al. (2014), isolated the 180-230-year signal containing the de Vries cycle in ∆14C production and 10Be flux data between 22 and 10 kyr BP. This signal displays the 2400-year Bray cycle modulation, allowing the identification, albeit imprecisely, of the position of Bray lows B7-B9 (figure 60) at ~ 15, 17.6, and 20.5 kyr BP. If correct, these dates support a periodicity for the Bray solar cycle between 2450-2500 years, further substantiating its close association with the climatic cycle that also appears closer to 2500 than 2400 years. The authors also propose that, during the Last Glacial Maximum, solar minima correlate with more negative δ18O values in ice (lower temperatures) and are accompanied by increased snow accumulation and sea-salt input over Central Greenland (Adolphi et al., 2014). This supports the idea that the Bray climate cycle also acts during glacial periods.

Figure 60. The Bray cycle during the last glacial maximum. a). Reconstruction of the 10Be flux using accumulation rates and ice-flow modeling from the GRIP ice core. b). 14C concentration after correction for fractionation and decay, from tree rings (pink) and Hulu Cave speleothem H82 (black). c). 14C production rate (H82 speleothem, black) and 10Be flux (orange), normalized to display only the variability in the 180–230 yr band to capture the solar de Vries cycle (208 yr). Source: F. Adolphi et al., 2014. Nature Geo. 7, 662-666. Due to the modulation of the de Vries cycle by the Bray cycle, periods of maximum de Vries variability correspond to the lows of the Bray cycle, and are spaced by ~ 2450 years. GS, Greenland stadial; GI, Greenland interstadial.

The solar-climate relationship

Given the strength of the correlation between past cycles of climate change, and cycles in the production and deposition of cosmogenic isotopes, like the Bray cycle, the solar-climate relationship is accepted in paleoclimatology as non-controversial. Sixteen of twenty-eight (57%) of the articles whose climatic evidence has been reviewed here (see part A) explicitly state that changes in solar forcing are likely to be the cause of the observed climatic changes, and only one explicitly rules them out. Then, why is the solar-climate relationship so controversial outside of the paleoclimatology field?

“The reality of the Maunder Minimum and its implications of basic solar change may be but one more defeat in our long and losing battle to keep the sun perfect, or, if not perfect, constant, and if inconstant, regular. Why we think the sun should be any of these when other stars are not is more a question for social than for physical science” (Eddy, 1976).

There are three main objections that opponents of the solar-climate theory raise, and two of them will be reviewed here, as they are pertinent to the Bray cycle. Since the close relationship between climate changes of the past and changes in the cosmogenic isotope record is undeniable, the first objection is to state that the cosmogenic record is likely to be contaminated by climate and therefore is more of a climatic record than a solar activity record. The second objection is that the sun is luckily extraordinarily constant, and therefore the small changes measured in total solar irradiation (TSI) between an 11-year maximum and minimum are of about 0.1% and produce a very small, almost undetectable, effect on climate. Since there is no indication that the changes were much bigger during the last solar grand minimum, the Maunder Minimum, we know of no mechanism to produce the observed climatic changes. The third objection is that for the past four decades solar activity and global temperatures have been going in opposite directions. We will deal with this objection more in detail in a future article, but for the time being suffice it to say that solar activity is just one of the several forcings that act on climate, and therefore one should not expect temperatures to always follow solar activity, even if the theory is correct.

That the cosmogenic isotope record is affected by climate changes has been known from the beginning. The ∆14C record is affected by changes in the carbon cycle. When the oceans cool they absorb more CO2, and for a constant rate of production the 14C/12C ratio increases. Changes in vegetation go in the opposite way as plants release CO2 during periods of cooling. On a scale of years to about one decade the faster plant response dominates, while for periods of decades to millennia the slower ocean response dominates. Solar activity reconstruction from ∆14C includes a carbon cycle model, usually a box-model, but the sea level changes associated with ice-sheets melting during deglaciation are usually considered too large to be properly modeled and thus solar activity reconstructions from ∆14C usually span only the Holocene. 10Be deposition at the poles is affected by stratospheric volcanic eruptions and precipitation rates. Volcanic SO2 and precipitation rates measured from ice cores are taken into account when reconstructing solar activity from 10Be. The generally very good level of agreement between solar activity reconstructions from ∆14C and 10Be for the Holocene indicates that any remaining contamination must act similarly over the different deposition pathways of both isotopes. This is possible as a significant cooling would increase ∆14C from enhanced CO2 uptake by the oceans, while it might increase 10Be by reducing precipitation rates. But as every climate proxy requires careful evaluation of the many factors affecting it, like sedimentation rates, or upwelling strength, to provide accurate information, the question is not if there is climate contamination in the cosmogenic record, but if the reconstructed record provides a good enough proxy for solar activity.

One test available to answer this question is to examine the reconstruction from cosmogenic isotopes over the period where we have information on solar activity from other sources that cannot be affected by climate. Comparison of the cosmogenic records over the past 400 years with the sunspot record shows a very good level of agreement (figure 61) despite this period undergoing intense climate change, from the depths of the LIA to the present global warming. Aurorae are more frequent the higher the solar activity, and using auroral historical records that extend back 1000 years, we observe that the correlation remains positive for the entire period, and that similar maxima and minima can be clearly recognized, including a period of high solar activity and frequent aurorae around 1100 AD at the time of the well-known Medieval Warm Period (Hood & Jirikowic, 1990; figure 61 b). The conclusion is that within reasonable expectations the cosmogenic record reflects solar activity and thus is a useful proxy for it.

Since the cosmogenic record has faithfully registered the solar centennial variability for the past thousand years as determined from auroral records, and for the past 400 years as determined from sunspots numbers, Hood and Jirikowic (1990) provide another argument for the solar origin of the ~ 2400-year Bray cycle. If the Bray cycle were terrestrial in origin, the modulation that it produces on the de Vries cycle (Sonett, 1984) should not be observable on solar activity records, and the ~ 210-year cycle should appear unmodulated in solar activity phenomena, like sunspots or aurorae. However, as figure 61 shows, the modulation is clearly observable, as the lows of the de Vries cycle corresponding to the Spörer and Maunder minima (dV2 & dV3, figure 61) present less solar activity that the adjacent lows. Again, the only possible conclusion is that the modulation caused by the ~ 2400-year cycle, and the cycle itself, are also of solar origin.

Further support for the implausibility of a climatic contamination of the cosmogenic record of such magnitude that would render it inadequate to determine past solar activity comes from the study of another climate cycle. A 1500-year cycle has been identified by several researchers and does not show up in cosmogenic records during the Holocene. Kern et al. (2012) identified this cycle, as well as the Bray and millennial cycles in a Miocene lake sediment 10.5 Myr old (figure 62 b). That these cycles are so old speaks of the stability of their causes over time, despite the many changes suffered by the Earth. Within the Holocene the 1500-year cycle has been identified in an Alaskan coast record of iron deposition by drift-ice from the Kara sea (Darby et al., 2012; figure 62 d). It is clear that the 1500-year climatic cycle, has left no trace in the cosmogenic record (figure 62 a, b). It is difficult to argue that some climate cycles are greatly contaminating the cosmogenic record while others do not.

Figure 62. The 1500-year climate cycle does not correspond to a solar frequency. a). Lomb–Scargle periodogram of the Holocene sunspot activity detects known solar cycles, including the de Vries cycle (~ 208 years), millennial Eddy cycle (~ 970 years), and the Bray cycle (~ 2200 years), but not a ~ 1500-year cycle. b). Time-converted periodograms of ~ 8200 years, 10.5 million years old, Miocene climate proxy data from a Lake Pannon (Austria) 6 m. sediment core. Ostracods, magnetic susceptibility (magnetic minerals), and gamma radiation (radioactive minerals) respond to different climatic conditions. Ostracods define three main periodicities at ~ 1000, ~ 1500, and ~ 2400 years. Source: A.K. Kern et al., 2012. Palaeo 329-330, 124-136. c). Wavelet analysis of a solar activity reconstruction from 10Be and 14C, showing the power of the cycles over the length of the time series and the complete absence of a ~ 1500-year cycle in the solar record. d). Wavelet analysis of the presence of iron grains at a core off the coast of Alaska, as a proxy for drift ice from the Kara sea, displaying a ~ 1500-year periodicity. Source: D.A. Darby et al., 2012. Nat. Geo. 5, 897-900.

The 8.2 Kyr event or the 7.7 kyr event?

As reviewed in part A, there is great uncertainty between different authors regarding the position of the fourth low in the Bray cycle within a period of climatic instability that extends between 8.4 and 7.1 kyr BP (figures 52-56). We have then seen that this climatic uncertainty corresponds to an unclear signal in the cosmogenic record for the B4 low (figures 57 & 58) where multiple GSM are identified. Solar cycles are irregular by nature, with the 11-year Schwabe cycle being registered as lasting between 9 and 14 years, and showing very large differences in sunspot number amplitude (figure 59). The Bray cycle is no exception and can also last between 2300 and 2600 years, with an average of 2450-2500 years. The mid-point between B5 and B3 falls at ~ 7800 BP (figure 57). As it is important to know the climatic effect of the solar Bray lows and to identify other climate cycles that are acting during the Holocene, I shall attempt to identify B4 with more precision.

The 8.2 kyr event has been one of the largest climatic changes of the Holocene, and coincides with a sudden drop in methane levels of 100 ppb in Greenland ice cores (Kobashi et al., 2007; figure 38). It has been generally attributed to the Lake Agassiz outburst dated at 8.3 kyr BP that is believed to have caused a temporary reduction in the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation (see drop in salinity figure 53 b). However, Rohling and Pälike (2005) have showed that in many well-dated proxies there was an underlying climatic deterioration between about 8.5 and 8.0 kyr BP that was punctuated by the sharp 8.3 kyr BP proglacial lake outbreak. Rohling and Pälike (2005) attribute the broad deterioration to reduced solar activity due to the temporal coincidence with the three Sahelian solar grand minima. They recommend caution when assigning global climatic effects to the periglacial lakes outburst and the effect of the melting water on the NADW formation, due to this coincidence. The combined effect of the global cooling due to this solar low with the regional or hemispheric abrupt cooling from the Lakes Agassiz and Ojibway event is what made this period between 8.4 and 7.9 kyr BP suffer the most abrupt temperature drop of the Holocene, at least in the North Atlantic region.

A detailed study of the hydrology of the Rhone Valley of France over a 1700-year period between 8.5 and 6.8 kyr BP by Berger et al. (2016) identifies three multicentennial cold and wet phases separated by warm, drier intervals (figure 63). During the cold-humid periods the Citelle river changed to a braided fluvial style, greatly increasing the water flow and sediment discharge. This fluvial change coincides with increased hydrological activity elsewhere in Europe, lower temperatures in the Greenland ice core GISP2 and glacier advances in the Alps (Berger et al., 2016; figure 63).

The first cold/wet phase corresponds to the 8.2 kyr event and coincides with the Sahel cluster of GSM, while the second and third cold/wet phases at 7.7 and 7.2 kyr BP coincide with the Jericho cluster of GSM (figures 63 & 64). The first and third phases are separated by one millennium, and also separated by a millennium from other climatic events characterized by low solar activity at 9.2 and 6.3 kyr BP (figure 64), indicating that they are the E9 and E8 lows of the ~ 1000-year Eddy solar cycle. Thus the 7.7 kyr event is unambiguously identified as the B4 low of the Bray cycle.

Figure 64. Solar grand minima clustering at the lows of the Bray cycle. a). Holocene solar activity (sunspots) reconstruction from 14C data. Source: A.K. Kern et al., 2012. Palaeo 329-330, 124-136. Blue bars indicate the lows of the Bray cycle. Blue arcs on top display a regular 2475-year periodicity for comparison. Black boxes correspond to grand solar minima close to the lows of the Bray cycle, with their names or initials. Orange bars correspond to some of the lows of the ~ 1000-year Eddy solar cycle, with only the lows at 8.3 (E9) and 7.3 (E8) kyr BP numbered. This figure illustrates the difficulty of correctly identifying B4, a cause for the variable length assigned to the cycle by different numerical analyses. b). Probability density function (PDF) of the time of occurrence of grand minima relative to the time of occurrence of the nearest low of the Bray cycle, using the superposed epoch analysis. The times of occurrence of lows of the Bray cycle were defined by considering the average of two second singular spectrum analysis components of the sunspot number reconstruction from 14C and 10Be, and are indicated by the numbers in the figure. Source: I.G. Usoskin et al., 2016. A&A 587, A150.

Conclusions

3) The 2400-year climatic cycle corresponds in period and phase to a cycle in cosmogenic isotopes highlighting the coincidence of abrupt cooling climate change events with clusters of grand solar minima and prolonged periods of low solar activity.

4) The 8.2 kyr event does not belong to the Bray cycle, and resulted from the coincidence of a low in the ~ 1000-year Eddy solar cycle with the outbreak of proglacial Lake Agassiz.

Acknowledgements

I thank Andy May for reading the manuscript and improving its English.

Even if the 2400-yr Bray cycle is not a property of long-term solar activity it still is something we must reckon with and especially if changes in atmospheric CO2 levels have nothing to do with it– that’s how science works.

No one was around to count sunspots 11,000 years ago. If cosmogenic isotope production is related to solar activity which in turn is related to sunspots, which taken together are related to historical instances of global warming and cooling corresponding to a ~2400-year solar cycle, we should be skeptical of the science of AGW as a complete explanation of climate change.

Well, I have to include the authors of all the articles defending the existence of said cycle. It would be completely inappropriate to use the first person in singular, since I have not done any research on the issue. I think the evidence about the Bray climatic cycle in the literature is quite abundant and clear. I have only used a small part of it for the article for brevity.

Sixteen of twenty-eight (57%) of the articles whose climatic evidence has been reviewed here (see part A) explicitly state that changes in solar forcing are likely to be the cause of the observed climatic changes, and only one explicitly rules them out. Then, why is the solar-climate relationship so controversial outside of the paleoclimatology field?

Wow a “consensus” of 57% , how can anyone question that ?!

Skeptics usually dismiss Cooks fake 97% consensus and frequently argue that science is not based on consensus and that the IPCC’s consensus building policy has been one of the main flaws in it’s process which has corrupted the progress of climatology. Now you want us to accept a “consensus” of 57%.

The so-called Bray cycle is a best a period blip , not a cyclic up and down. While I would expect solar activity to have an impact on climate, the more of this kind of thing I see, the less convinced I become that there is a detectable effect.

It is not a question of consensus. It demonstrates that the opinion among paleoclimatology experts, that solar variability is the responsible cause for the observed changes, is not fringe or generally rejected. It doesn’t say anything about the actual cause, but it does say a lot about how paleoclimatologists see the issue.

That may not be the best given the facts– as it turns out, “the modern Grand maximum (which occurred during solar cycles 19–23, i.e., 1950-2009),” says Ilya Usoskin, “was a rare or even unique event, in both magnitude and duration, in the past three millennia.” [Usoskin et al., Evidence for distinct modes of solar activity, A&A 562 (2014)]

Usoskin’s opinion on a modern grand maximum is very controversial. While 20th century solar activity is clearly above Holocene average, it does not appear highly unusual after the revised sunspot series, that is supported by the great majority of solar experts.

Global temperatures have not increased for the 21st century except for the El Niño 2014-2016 warming that it is now being corrected (2001-2013 = flat). Without a contribution from long-term above average solar activity, global temperatures are likely to rise at a reduced rate, if at all.

The important point is that if solar forcing has been underestimated, which is easy because it has been considered a very small factor by IPCC, then the dangers of global warming have been greatly overestimated.

And I guess all bets are off in the event of a Grand Minimum, which is always a definite possibility even if not a certain prediction.

The issue is that no one knows when the new Grand Minimum occurs and no one really knows what would happen then. I call such extended minima of suppressed solar activity Grand Minima, since the Maunder Minimum (lasting from 1645 till about 1700 or 1712) is only one of those. Later minima, such as the Dalton Minimum (ca. 1800 AD) and modern (ca. 1900 AD) ones were not really Grand Minima, in neither depth or duration. ~Usoskin

I just defend my interpretation of the evidence. I am prepared to change my position if the evidence demands it.

I change my position quite often when the evidence available to me changes. Three years ago I believed solar variability had little effect on climate, due in part to Leif Svalgaard skeptic arguments. I used to say that the LIA was just one off, and N=1 doesn’t make a statistic case. However one day I decided to check what the available evidence showed, and saw that essentially all SGM and cluster of SGM display a clear cooling and climatic deterioriation with important changes in precipitation. The climatic evidence doesn’t support Leif Svalgaard position, and thus I changed mine. Since then more evidence available to me reinforces my position.

Since I am not a climate scientist, and I have no strong position on the causes of global warming, I don’t care on the way we satisfy our energetic needs as long as it is technologically and economically sound, I have no skin in this game.

I am prepared to change my position on anything. I don’t believe the CO2 warming alarmism simply because it is not supported by the evidence. In particular since there has not been significant warming for the entire 21st century, discounting meteorological causes like El Niño. If warming had continued at the same rate as in the 1980-90’s I’d be in the opposite side. As a scientist I am wedded to evidence, not theory.

In particular since there has not been significant warming for the entire 21st century, discounting meteorological causes like El Niño. If warming had continued at the same rate as in the 1980-90’s I’d be in the opposite side. As a scientist I am wedded to evidence, not theory.

Wedded to the evidence , except the bits which don’t fit , which can be dismissed as something else.

What was the rate of warming in the 80 and 90s if we discount El Nino events? If it were not for the 1997/98 super el Nino , no one would have been getting in a flap anyway.

El Nino Nina is not a source of energy , it a redistribution. If you just snip out inconvenient Ninos you are introducing a bias.

We have to try to understand what the evidence represents with honesty. Obviously in science for the same set of evidence we usually get different contradictory hypotheses. My interpretation might not be the correct one, but I am trying to follow the evidence.

These are real annual temperature averages for Spain, not anomalies. The increase in temperatures from the mid 70’s to the late 90’s is evident. It is also evident that since 2004 temperatures are range bound between 15-16°C and trendless. 2016 is slightly below 2015, so this El Niño doesn’t change the series. Temperatures are affected by Niño or Niña years, but the trend is clear also for the rest of the years.

Regarding ENSO, it is more than a redistribution system. During Niña years there is less cloud cover over the equatorial Pacific, so more energy enters the system, and the opposite happens during Niño years.

And I am not snipping out any Niño. I am just seeing what is happening. Already half of the warming induced by the 2015-16 El Niño has dissipated. This is happening even without a La Niña, so the chance that all the warming caused by the 2015-16 El Niño goes away is so far real.

The way you describe Nino/Nina process seems basically correct. Ironically it is the cooler years of La Nina when the earth is getter “warmer” in the sense of accumulating energy in OHC and El Nino when this becomes visible in the surface record as the heat begins its outward journey to space.

Whether this process is long term neutral ( as climatologists generally and arbitrarily assume ) remains to be established. I don’t see any reason to assume it is either constant or long term neutral.

I don’t agree with your comment that the recent El Nino will dissipate totally in the next few years. The last one did not, it left a rise of about 0.1 deg C, this one looks to be flattening out with a similar residue.

Whether this process is long term neutral … remains to be established.

The evidence shows very little ENSO during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, and increasing ENSO for the past 7000 years. This is consistent with La Niña being a feature of a warm world and El Niño of a cooling world, and thus does not support it being long term neutral. But to me Milankovitch changes determine both ENSO and temperature evolution with ENSO being just a mechanism by which Milankovitch forcing determines rate of temperature change.

The last one did not [dissipate totally], it left a rise of about 0.1 deg C

It was actually the 2000-01 La Niña that preceded the rise of ~ 0.1°C. And La Niña of 1985 that preceded the previous rise. I’ve never understood why the increase is associated with Los Niños, when it realizes after Las Niñas. Is this an issue of gender discrimination? Without a La Niña to drive the process, the 2015-16 El Niño warming is being slow to go away, but the cooling is still proceeding. There is no a priori reason, to my knowledge, to assume when it will end.

There are many fine scientists plus the UK and Dutch met offices that say that CET is a good (but not perfect) proxy for global and certainly NH temperatures. I have cited these sources many times here.

Lets assume they do have some global resonance as science believes. What would be your reaction?
tonyb

Merely continuation of the motivated decision making so evident in everything the data fiddlers have done so far. That combined with not wanting to be denounced for rocking the gravy boat are more than adequate to explain what is happening.

Most if it is a conspiracy of intent rather than an organised conspriacy, thought he climategate emails do provide clear written proof of conspiracy in some quarters to pervert published record and suppress anything that does not fit with their agenda or “the cause”.

Obviously I agree ;-)
But we are unable to determine what part of the warming has a solar cause. To me the evidence suggests that neither CO2, nor the sun, can account for all the warming. It is probably a combination plus perhaps some other factors, like lower than average volcanic activity, and a long term climate reorganization after the LIA (internal centennial variability).

One of the hazards of javier cut and paste science .. you know where you cut and paste old charts that use deprecated data.. is that you cant update them.

Rules.
if you read something where a guy takes a chart from an old paper, you
can be pretty sure he never checked the data for himself. he never
checked that they plotted the data correctly. he never checked if the
data had been improved.
These are basic QC checks. If your goal is supporting what you believe
( religion) you will never check sources. You will just “trust” your sources
and republish what you believe. If you are a scientist you always probe
the sources you rely on.. you doubt them as a methodological step.
IS that data correct? has it been updated? can I rely on it?

If you see no evidence of the researcher going to sources, going to
primary sources and checking the lines of actual evidence, going
to the actual data, then they really havent made a case. They have
merely collected pictures. Pictures that may not even accurately
reflect the data.
There is a reason why journals don’t allow you to merely cut and paste
figures from other papers. one is style, the other is they expect you
to actually check the data you rely on.

IF you see a paper on solar that does not use the latest sunspot series,
THROW IT IN THE TRASH. basically all the “science” on solar cycles
needs to be redone. It should be easy to recompile all this science.
right? I mean these guys should just be able to re run their code
and determine if the new series changes their conclusions or not.
Thats QC 101.

So you say, without showing evidence, as usual. That’s an opinion and we all know the value of your opinions.

IF you see a paper on solar that does not use the latest sunspot series, THROW IT IN THE TRASH.

Again an opinion. The correction to the sunspot series only affects the sunspot series that is 400 years old. It does not affect the cosmogenic record on which the Bray solar cycle is based. And the Bray solar cycle is present in every solar activity reconstruction of the Holocene even the ones from the 80’s no matter how incorrect they were, because it is based in the position of grand solar minima that have always been correctly identified (even named) in the cosmogenic record. That’s why the Bray (aka Hallstatt) cycle was identified in the late 60’s and 50 years later continues to be identified and studied. Let’s see what’s left from BEST reconstruction just ten years from now.

Javier, is mosh talking about your little graph there that i presented? It’s dated 2008, but presumably that refers to the temperature reconstructions. The solar data is the most updated “svalgaard approved” solar data, right? It sure looks just like any of the newest solar series that we’ve seen. (IOW, is mosh just wandering off the reservation AGAIN?)

… except for the last three decades when solar cycle was declining and temperature record was increasing. If you are convinced of the previous causal relationship then there must be some other factor causing the recent warming DESPITE a drop in solar activity.

During the most recent ten thousand years, solar input to the NH above 60 degrees decreased almost 40 watts per square meter and the solar input to the SH below 60 degrees increased by that same amount and ice core records show both hemispheres kept cycling in the same bounds.
That straw man argument is that both hemispheres are self regulating.
Warmer causes oceans to thaw and promote enough more snowfall.
Colder causes oceans to freeze and promote enough less snowfall.

During the most recent ten thousand years, solar input to the NH above 60 degrees decreased almost 40 watts per square meter and the solar input to the SH below 60 degrees increased by that same amount and ice core records show both hemispheres kept cycling in the same bounds.

A common bias is to consider geographic hemispheres instead of climatic hemispheres. The climatic equator is the Inter Convergence Tropical Zone that does not have a fixed position. During the year climatic hemispheres contract and expand with their inverted seasons. For the past 10,000 years they also have been changing their respective sizes according to Milankovitch changes in insolation. Those climatic hemisphere changes account for a great deal of temperature buffering. Internal climate teleconnections account for the rest.

None of those changes have much to do with solar variability changes, that are superimposed on them.

You wrote; “A common bias is to consider geographic hemispheres instead of climatic hemispheres.”

I don’t do that, I understand the boundaries vary around the globe and vary from time to time.

The oceans that circulate in the NH provide moisture for Greenland ice cores. The oceans that circulate in the SH provide moisture for Antarctic ice cores. It does not matter where the boundaries are between the hemispheres. It matters that each system is self correcting and that each system stays in same bounds in cycles that are not in phase with each other.

For me, the NH is the NH circulation cycles, the SH is the SH circulation cycles, I don’t even need to know where the boundaries are because they are not really well known and they change all the time. Each hemisphere records its history in its own respective ice cores.

Aye, and if you start breaking it down by region or by other metric, then you need to be careful about cherry-picking / p-hacking.

If you look at five times as many regions, then the odds of one of them showing the cycle you’re looking for goes up quite a bit. So test for statistical significance, and make sure you’re careful about how you do it.

I trust that journals, editors, and referees have done their job at evaluating all those papers, because otherwise after 40 years a lot of articles would be denouncing the finding. And quite the contrary the number of articles on solar cycles keeps increasing with time.

After 40 years of being wrong the number of wrong articles keep increasing with time. They are getting more and more desperate to accomplish anything before their manmade global warming scam gets shuts down.

They are getting more and more desperate to accomplish anything before their manmade global warming scam gets shuts down.

Except that we are talking about the existence of a very long solar variability cycle that is not precisely a popular or consensus hypothesis, and nobody is making money with that. Quite the contrary it is not easy to build a successful scientific career on the effect of solar variability on climate. And yet many of the papers presented in the article’s bibliography have been published in very good journals where we can be quite sure that due to their controversial nature they must have been scrutinized.

They detect the cycle by power spectrum, time-spectrum and bispectrum analyses of the long-term series of the radiocarbon concentrations, and find that a principle feature of the time series is the long period of ∼ 2400 years.

That’s an awfully smooth power spectrum. Is it by any chance from a squared discrete fourier transform of all the data, made smooth for the plot by evaluation at frequencies that do not appear in the discrete fourier transform?

That is, would the actual discrete fourier transform over the plotted frequency range consist of ~40 points?

In which case, the falloff near 0 is likely to be from detrending and the low peak from a general appearance of low frequency energy.

Fourier transforms are extremely noisy beasts; smoothed either by doing lots of short fourier transforms, and squaring them and adding them, which is correct (it will be smooth if the process has a smooth spectrum) but costs you low frequency analysis since those frequences are then gone; or by interpolating with frequencies not in the fourier transform at all, which is not significant analysis-wise.

So, do you know how many degrees of freedom are in the plot?

Not actually as an attack but as a sample of how a signal processing guy is skeptical.

I am fine with skepticism. I have provided a link to the paper where you can try to find the details that you are interested into.

If you are not satisfied with that, you can write Vassily Dergachev at:
v.dergachev (at) mail.ioffe.ru
It is very likely he will provide answers for your doubts.

If still not convinced I can provide citations for dozens of articles that report on the ~ 2400 year cycle in cosmogenic records since the 1980’s. You can repeat the procedure for those works whose researchers are still active.

I trust that journals, editors, and referees have done their job at evaluating all those papers, because otherwise after 40 years a lot of articles would be denouncing the finding. And quite the contrary the number of articles on solar cycles keeps increasing with time.

Well you know it’s a different field. Climate science has its own signal processing standards.

Signal processing knows the statistics of its noise and goes by type I and type II error probabilities instead.

That leads it to doubt climate science’s science, though.

It doesn’t look like an empirical power spectrum. (For a stationary gaussian random process, the power at any frequency is independent of the power at the adjacent frequency, and negative exponentially distributed, which is incredibly noisy. That independence is the whole point of spectral analysis; otherwise it’s just a coordinate transformation of the data.)

If you are seeing pictorial signals by eye, it is OK to proceed to formal analysis, but first you have to be sure that no other factors give similar pictures, or if some do they can be explained – quantitatively if you proceed to numerical analysis.
Going digital can be an open door to adoption of suspect methods that so often grace these pages. Quality scientists keep to the straight and narrow.
That said, I am not so impressed by these glimpses of that Javier is kindly giving us. They might look good to researchers in his field and others but my eyes were calibrated on harder data. Geoff

Javier,
My apologies for not writing clearly.
I enjoy your essays here. There is a lot of work and deduction behind them and they cover interpretations that are not seen so often by the casual science reader. So, no criticism of your work was intended. My words above were more in response to rhhardin. Simply, I sought to express that the signal:noise that you show in your diagrams is weaker than I’ve been used to in another area of earth science. I wish it was better. In time, with more measurements, it might be.
I also sought to caution others against being too enthusiastic in adopting mathematical/statistical methods that have often been used poorly in climate work as many past examples on Dr Curry’s blog have shown.
Thank you for the list of references. I had already read some of them. Corporately, we used to interact with Ken McCracken in the 70s and 80s.
I look forward to further of your essays. Geoff

Indeed “climate science” has its own signal processing standards, which often bear little resemblance to those in competent signal analysis. One need only look at the raw “periodogram” of the sunspot data presented in Javier’s July 18 comment in Part A of this article to recognize the lack of comprehension of the basics of analyzing random-signal data.

The Vasiliev et al. analysis of radiocarbon series, however, is somewhat of a pleasant exception. Done by physicists at a prestigious institute, it utilizes the (bivariate) autocorrelation function of the data. Truncating that function at a reasonable effective length before applying the DFT is what gives smoothness to the power density, via the width of the spectral window. It only lacks confidence intervals to constitute an entirely credible analysis.

A quick course on stationary guassian processes, from which it can be intuited what an empirical power spectrum ought to look like.

Random examples of your process can be created knowing only the power spectrum. The power spectrum is all there is to say about a stationary gaussian random process. That’s why it’s fundamental.

Consider a periodic process, so it has a discrete spectrum.

At each frequency, generate a bivariate gaussian random number (complex, one gaussian in real and imaginary component) with mean squared absolute value equal to the power spectrum value for that frequency.

So, note in particular that the actual absolute values are very noisy from frequency to frequency. They’re independently chosen. The graph would be all noise with size of the noise varying across frequencies.

Take the DFT of that array of numbers to get a realization of your stationary random process (and take the real part if you don’t want complex).

That process is a complete realization of the statistics in the power spectrum you created way up at the top. There’s nothing more to say.

If the process is not stationary, then some other set of orthogonal functions are used instead of sines and cosines (which I know by the name Karhunan-Loeve expansion but it probably has other names). Those functions are eigenfunctions of the correlation function, whatever it is. Once again, there’s nothing more to say about the process, and that’s the point of the analysis into those terms.

If it’s not gaussian, all bets are off. The random numbers are not chosen independently any longer, and they’re not gaussian. The spectral analysis loses its significance but is continued by habit without much thought.

Anyway, the power spectrum ought to be noisy, and ought to have been plotted with, say, a dot at each peak and valley instead of a line.

Can I finally add that the smoothess in the shown case is from its not being a stationary process. The extended data window filled with zeroes means that sines and cosines aren’t the eigenfunctions of the correlation function, and an analysis using them anyway produces correllations between frequencies (smoothness) where there ought not to be any in a spectral analysis.

Some other set of functions would be necessary to get independent “frequencies,” and then you’d find that it’s all noise from one to another again.

[I]t’s not smoothness in the data but an artifact of a time window much longer than the data.

Nonsense! The acf in practice is computed over lags much SHORTER than the data. The smoothness characteristic of Blackmann-Tukey type estimates of the power spectrum comes as a result of widening the effective spectral window relative to that of the raw periodogram.

As I say, empirical power spectra are all noise from frequency to frequency. The power spectrum is the mean of this frequency-dependent noise level, which remains all noise in any realization.

Not so! It’s THEORETICAL Fourier-Stieltjes representations of the complex amplitude density of gaussian signals that call for infinitesimal sinusoids with independent, random PHASES–not amplitudes–at each continuous frequency. Empirical power spectra necessarily deal with integrals of power density over discrete frequency bands provided by the effective spectral windows, That’s a quaint notion of “noise” being invoked here, without any sense of physical signal.

Also, it seems that properly estimated power spectra are being conflated with raw periodograms, which always need to be decimated in time or in frequency to obtain reliable, consistent estimates of power density.

A quick course on stationary guassian processes, from which it can be intuited what an empirical power spectrum ought to look like.

Having learned about stationary gaussian processes form the likes of Bartlett and Rice half a century ago and having done thousands of empirical power spectrum analyses every year since then, I’ll skip the course given by a number-cruncher plainly unacquainted either with the Wiener-Khintchine theorem or with Burg’s “maximum entropy” algorithm, which fits a high-order AR process to the sample acf. The latter, in particular produces very smooth and regular spectral peaks, but with greater frequency resolution that Blackman-Tukey. All the mentioned pitfalls of direct DFT analysis and the need to establish “noise-floors” of empirical data are well-known here.

Can I finally add that the smoothess in the shown case is from its not being a stationary process.

Totally baseless speculation! Non-stationarity may produce misleading estimates of power content, when it varies over the duration of the record, but spectral smoothness comes from the effective width of the spectral window, The variation of power content over time is best explored via wavelet analysis, which produces very much “rougher” results than the corresponding empirical power spectra.

All in all, I see no circumstances where further discussion here of these issues would be worthwhile.

“Not so! It’s THEORETICAL Fourier-Stieltjes representations of the complex amplitude density of gaussian signals that call for infinitesimal sinusoids with independent, random PHASES–not amplitudes–at each continuous frequency. Empirical power spectra necessarily deal with integrals of power density over discrete frequency bands provided by the effective spectral windows, That’s a quaint notion of “noise” being invoked here, without any sense of physical signal.”

You get a bivariate gaussian adding up infinitesimals with random phase, when it’s all lumped into a single frequency. The equivalence is that you can represent a stationary gaussian random process over some time length L with discrete frequencies (e.g. a fourier series) if the spacing of the max frequency diffenence decreases to order 1/L. That is, probabilistically you can’t tell the difference. That’s the uncertainty principle.

So if you do a DFT, square it and plot it as a power spectrum, you get independent negative exponentially distributed numbers at each frequency, with mean (of the distribution) equal to the power spectrum.

The number itself though is all noise. Where the power spectrum is big, the mean will be big, but it’s just bigger noisy.

The usual way to smooth your power spectrum is use lots of different realizations of the process and average the (squared) result, but that costs you frequency resolution if the data is limited since you can’t use all of it at once. So in climate science they’re going to use all of it in a single DFT and square it, with no averaging.

That the shown result is smooth is then an artifact of the extra zeros included with the data in doing the DFT, not a result of the smoothness of any real power spectrum.

“Totally baseless speculation! Non-stationarity may produce misleading estimates of power content, when it varies over the duration of the record, but spectral smoothness comes from the effective width of the spectral window,”

No, this is a very important point. If it’s non-stationary, sines and cosines are the wrong functions to analyze with, just because the values in the DFT of the process are no longer independent. The whole reason for spectral analysis is to reduce the process to independent choices at each frequency.

You’d still have independent choices for some set of functions with a nonstationary process, but they’re not sines and cosines.

“When the oceans cool they absorb more CO2, and for a constant rate of production the 14C/12C ratio increases.”

While discriminating far less strongly than photosynthesis, there is significant fractionation of heavy isotopes in both absorption and evaporation from the ocean surface. Discrimination against 13C is about 2 per mil in absorption and 10 per mil in evaporation. Discrimination against 14C should be somewhat stronger.

The heavier isotopes are always “left behind”. In the case of absorption, the heavier are left in the atmosphere and in the case of evaporation they are left in the ocean.

The net effect is very significant concentration (8 per mil for 13C) of heavy isotopes in the ocean during warming regimes when evaporation exceeds absorption; and modest concentration in the atmosphere during cooling regimes when absorption exceeds evaporation.

“It can be expected that the low of ~ 2095 AD should barely be noticeable.”

I regard that as irresponsible to make such an assertion on the basis of an unreliable millennial cycle that you don’t know the origin of.
What can be expected is a solar minimum from the 2090’s that will cause a negative NAO regime for more solar cycles than the Maunder Minimum did. My model directly plots the duration of every solar minima without need for offbeat modulations. For example it readily plots the Wolf-Sporer-Maunder Triplet from around 810 BC, which starts right on one of your Eddy cycle maximums.http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/holobib.html

I regard that as irresponsible to make such an assertion on the basis of an unreliable millennial cycle that you don’t know the origin of.

Well, nobody knows the origin of any solar cycle. Even the origin of the 11-year Schwabe cycle is under intense debate.

But if you have followed the article you should have seen in figure 58 that the 208-year de Vries cycle is modulated by the higher ~ 2400 year periodicity. This is described in several articles as indicated.

It is possible to see that the modulation of the 208-year cycle has already caused more solar activity in its last low. If past is prologue the next 208-year low ~ 2,095 AD should have more activity, not less, than the previous.

For example it readily plots the Wolf-Sporer-Maunder Triplet from around 810 BC, which starts right on one of your Eddy cycle maximums.

810 BC is 2760 BP. If you have been following the article, that is a low (B2) of the Bray cycle, the main Holocene cycle.

That certainly is problem where you have a low in Bray and a high in Eddy at the same time. It is your view that your next Eddy maximum at 2100 will make the ‘low of ~ 2095 AD barely noticeable’ that concerns me. Your next Bray maximum isn’t until much later, if there is such a thing.

That certainly is problem where you have a low in Bray and a high in Eddy at the same time.

This has happened several times in the past. A low in any of the long cycles (Bray or Eddy) increases the chances of a solar grand minimum, and at least one is likely to result. I haven’t been able to find a clear climatic signature at times of cycle highs, thus I consider the lows to be determinant for climate change.

However you still don’t understand what I said. It is not the Eddy maximum at 2100 that will make the low at ~ 2095 barely noticeable. What will make the de Vries low at ~ 2095 barely noticeable is that it is 600 years after the 1350-1550 B1 Bray low.

Figure 6. Adjustment of the solar variability model (red curve) to the sunspots groups number for the past 400 years and the solar activity reconstructed by Steinhilber et al., 2012, for the past 3000 years. The ~ 1000-year Eddy cycle is shown as a pink sinusoidal curve. The ~ 2500-year Bray cycle is shown as a yellow sinusoidal curve with the active phase as solid line and the inactive as dashed line. The ~ 208-year de Vries cycle is shown as red filled circles during the active phase, and as red empty circles during the inactive phase. The ~ 87-year Gleissberg cycle is shown in blue. Grand solar minima are named in black, warm periods in red and cold periods in blue. Known colder periods from temperature reconstructions are highlighted in turquoise. A quiet Sun mode during grand solar minima has been proposed by several authors and shown as a black dashed line.

The position for all the de Vries lows for the past 3000 years is indicated. And we have already entered the inactive phase of the Bray cycle (yellow dashed curve) that is characterized by inconspicuous de Vries lows (empty circles).

If you have a reason to be concerned is because your model is probably wrong if it expects a strong minimum towards the end of the century. Past data suggest the de Vries cycle is no longer very active. It is unlikely that a solar grand minimum takes place within the next 300-400 years. And these are really good news.

“However you still don’t understand what I said. It is not the Eddy maximum at 2100 that will make the low at ~ 2095 barely noticeable. What will make the de Vries low at ~ 2095 barely noticeable is that it is 600 years after the 1350-1550 B1 Bray low.”

What I have been writing all along is that the de Vries cycle is modulated by the Bray cycle, not by the Eddy cycle. Both the Bray and Eddy cycles have been going up for the past 400 years.

But if you are saying that Bray dominates over Eddy

I haven’t said that. The evidence supports that these two cycles are independent of each other. A low in any of them can cause a solar grand minimum.

Then why claim there will be one at 2100 AD?

If a high is defined as the mid-point between two lows, and might be characterized by higher solar activity, and a climate optimum, even if the climate signal in proxy records is not clearly recognizable.

995 BC to 1885 AD divided by 13 is 221.5 years. That won’t work.

140 year drift in 3000 years is not too bad, considering that solar cycles are everything but precise.

It reveals the astronomical mechanism of solar minima, and it renders any cycle based approach obsolete as it shows exactly where each minimum starts, and its duration.

“What I have been writing all along is that the de Vries cycle is modulated by the Bray cycle, not by the Eddy cycle.”

Not so, you wrote in your last post:
“It shouldn’t be difficult to greatly improve Steinhilber & Beer 2013 forecast, as they predict a low for 2100, when it corresponds to a high in the millennial cycle (1100 AD Medieval Warming Period -> 2100 AD Modern Warming Period).”

Nothing about Bray there.

“If a high is defined as the mid-point between two lows, and might be characterized by higher solar activity, and a climate optimum, even if the climate signal in proxy records is not clearly recognizable.”

If? Might be? You also said that you “haven’t been able to find a clear climatic signature at times of cycle highs” Now you are suggesting that solar highs may not even have a clearly recognisable climate signal.

“140 year drift in 3000 years is not too bad, considering that solar cycles are everything but precise.”

175 years adrift, and that is bad as you have it labelled as 208 years, but have placed them at 221.5 year intervals. It’s not de Vries at that pitch. Your Bray cycle on that chart is only 2300 years too. It’s sloppy work, not ‘drift’.

I am not willing to get into a “I said, you said” type of debate. I only care about what the evidence shows.

The evidence shows that the 980 year Eddy cycle is going up and close to a high that should take place ~ 2100 AD.
I am not the only one seeing this. Read:
Scafetta, N. (2012). Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter–Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 80, 296-311.https://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.4143

He sees with his model the same I see with past evidence:

The evidence also shows that the 2475-year Bray cycle is going up and due to its known and published modulation of the 210-year de Vries cycle, the de Vries lows are becoming less conspicuous, not more.

Due to all above, whoever expects a solar grand minimum, or lower than present solar activity for the next 200 years, is very likely to be wrong. The sun is favorable to the present optimum lasting a few centuries more.

So we won’t know why you contradicted yourself about Eddy, OK then. From what I gather of your Bray, the early Antique Little Ice Age starting in fact from around 354 AD, should not even exist, nor should the super minimum from around 1117 AD in the MWP. OK then.

Modern solar activity reconstructions, like that of Steinhilber et al., 2012 do not show unusually low solar activity at 354 AD or 1117 AD. Why do you think those cold periods should be due to low solar activity?

Scafetta is pseudo harmonics employing cycles that don’t exist such as his mean of orbital and synodic periods that he creates his 115 and 130 yr periods with. How these behave as wave functions and drive beat harmonics of that length is pure voodoo. Which brings me to a major criticism I have of your work. It’s fair enough to note a periodicity in major cold events, but there isn’t really any basis for assuming Bray or Eddy are sinusoidal, and that their effect is in a sinusoidal manner.

“Steinhilber et al., 2012 do not show unusually low solar activity at 354 AD or 1117 AD. Why do you think those cold periods should be due to low solar activity?”

Steinhilber 2012 gives the wrong signal for the latter solar minimum in what is called Sporer, from 1550 for a few decades. It’s not reliable. From 354 AD and from 1117 AD were long duration solar minima according to my model, both longer than it makes Maunder.

I could give you a list of solar minimum start dates and approximate duration that it plots for the last 6700 years, but you would still need to visually inspect the progression to actually confirm them. Alcyone Ephemeris do a free demo download. I gave the basic rules on your last post. The sunspot cycle maximum dates in this list is a great help in getting acquainted with the break points into and out of each solar minima. The exact break point into each minima is not always clear, such as the unusually late start to Dalton, but it is apparent that the progression is intrinsic to the ordering of sunspot cycle maxima, and to the occurrence and duration of solar minima. Take a look, it’s very intriguing.

No, Geoff. I have used IntCal13, that is linked in the legend of figure 57:http://www.radiocarbon.org/IntCal13%20files/intcal13.pdf
Go download the pdf and check the dates with those given by me in the text. Check also the figures in the pdf for the lows of the Bray cycle. Anybody can do that and reproduce that figure.

The Bray cycle is defined in IntCal13. It doesn’t matter if you use Solanki’s 2004 solar activity reconstruction, or any other one more to your taste. The position of the grand solar minima that define the Bray cycle is not going to change significantly, as they are a feature of every solar activity reconstruction since Eddy’s times, when the minima were given their names.

A Bray cycle of 2400-2500 years is a conspicuous feature of the 14C calibration curve that has been very carefully reconstructed by hundreds of researchers over more than six decades. There is no way around it, because there is nothing to interpret. The people getting interesting about signal analysis are plain wrong because the evidence is there for anybody to see it, and everybody that has done a proper signal analysis on the data has come with the same result. The cycle is in the 14C and 10Be data.

No Javier you are incorrect. You have not used the IntCal13 record for fig 57. Show us the Kern et al 2012 paper that depicts this record.

And you are also highly mistaken when stating the old Solanki 2004 record is the same as IntCal13, I pointed this out in your part A article but once again it went through to the keeper.

The revisions of the radiocarbon data are VASTLY different. The whole basis of your part B is based on old data, there was a 340 year anomaly occurring in the German Dendrochronology record between 3200BC-2600BC at IntCal04 that has now been revised and carried forward with further revisions in IntCal13.

As stated several times there does seem to be a quasi Bray type cycle in the solar proxy record varying between 2100 & 2500 years, but trying to claim there is a rigid 2450 year cycle does not cut it. The most up to date data shows a solid 4627 year cycle for clusters of grand minima indispersed with another weaker cluster occurring at 2100 and 2500 intervals depending which side of the 4627 year cycle you are viewing.

No Javier you are incorrect. You have not used the IntCal13 record for fig 57.

Do not accuse me of lying. The calibration curve is IntCal13, as stated.
Here you have a blow up of the 2000-3400 BC (3900-5400 BP) period of my figure that you comment about, compared with IntCal13 (marked with a red ellipse). You can see that all your German trees are at the exact same position.

I did not expect that you would be convinced no matter how irrefutable the evidence. You are too invested on your hypothesis. This is the same problem with global warming. Many people think that when there is no warming, or when scientific articles demonstrating that IPCC assumptions are incorrect are published the whole thing will just die. Most climate scientists are too invested to recant. They won’t accept any amount of contrary evidence.

“This is the same problem with global warming. Many people think that when there is no warming, or when scientific articles demonstrating that IPCC assumptions are incorrect are published the whole thing will just die. Most climate scientists are too invested to recant. They won’t accept any amount of contrary evidence.”

I’m very sympathetic to this but climate science has its own rules.

Jokingly I said that physics is a social arrangement unified by a common set of equations and climate science is a social arrangement united by a common set of predictions.

You can’t fix it without the field itself disappearing, leaving only bits of this or that showing up as isolated publications in the JGR, when there is physics to apply, but it won’t be called climate science.

Anyway disputing climate science’s preferred predictions using climate science rules isn’t going to get anywhere. What a signal processing guy sees as flaky results on either side doesn’t matter. What matters is the prediction.

It would be amusing to send all climate science papers to be peer reviewed by signal processing guys. Everything concluded about long term data would disappear.

Not even. Failed predictions, like 0.2-0.3°C/decade warming in the 21st century, are erased. A posteriori, ad hoc, explanations are given making it impossible to falsify the hypothesis due to failed predictions, and the data is adjusted to continue showing warming when there isn’t.
Hard core, highly invested scientists will continue to defend dangerous global warming regardless of evidence and predictions, while lowly invested scientists will abandon the hypothesis, and it will slowly stop being a hot topic.

During the late 1990’s we were nearly all convinced that the warming was essentially anthropogenic. A lot of skeptics are so because they have changed their opinion.

I just did. The calibration curve in figure 57 is IntCal13. The comparison I showed proves it:

Right-click on the graph to see a larger version. It is the same thing.

The solar activity curve in figure 57 is the one displayed in Kern et al., 2012 (figure 8) based on Solanki’s data:
Kern, A. K., et al. “Strong evidence for the influence of solar cycles on a Late Miocene lake system revealed by biotic and abiotic proxies.” Palaeogeography, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology 329 (2012): 124-136.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003101821200096X

Figure 57 is a composite of two different things and both support the same interpretation. Your attempt to defend that I have not used IntCal13 when I did is both insulting and pitiful. You have no credit left with me.

You are becoming obnoxious. I made the figure from published, peer-reviewed data. I didn’t made it up. The data is not bogus. The data is published and available to anybody.

You are trying to raise an issue that doesn’t exist, to hide the fact that IntCal13 is incompatible with your hypothesis. The bumps in IntCal13 coincide with the lows of the 2475-year Bray cycle. There is no way to deny that because anybody can download IntCal13 from the official page and check it in 5 minutes by himself.http://www.radiocarbon.org/IntCal13%20files/intcal13.pdf

The way I have done figure 57 is irrelevant. IntCal13 supports the 2475-year Bray cycle. Therefore you are wrong. Your false accusations are not improving your position.

Yes you made it up. You presented IntCal98 values and labelled it as IntCal13.

To illustatrate the differences (again) look at the grand minima cluster centre of IntCal98 at around 5450 BP (correct?)

Now look at the same cluster on IntCal13 and you can see it has shifted by about 400 years to 5000 BP (correct?)

The records are completely different.

The error was picked up in IntCal04 as shown.

Your fig 57 shows the same clustering as IntCal98 and is not a representation of the current data set. The new data backs up my paper that is still unchallenged but unfortunately discredits your attempts to claim a rigid 2450 year cluster cycle over the Holocene.

Yes , very unimpressed that we have to get this far down in comment to find an admission that that “fig57” was NOT a published graph as claimed in the caption but a home made cut and paste.

I was suspicious about the appearance of this graph but the fact that it was fig 57 and the caption clearly stated a paper ref as being the source gave the clear impression that this was a published PR graph.

Javier is so sold on his idea that he is committing all the unscientific behaviour that sceptics have been railing about for years.

Published graph? With two different sources clearly indicated in the figure, one for solar activity and another one for the calibration curve? With an authorship watermark in grey that directs to an internet blog?

You are not a very good observer, as your impression that the figure has been published as such shows. The sources of the data are clearly indicated and can be checked by anyone with an internet connection. If that’s not enough for you, that’s your problem. Accusing me of unscientific behavior for your miss-impressions is simply not acceptable. Goodbye.

“Yes , very unimpressed that we have to get this far down in comment to find an admission that that “fig57” was NOT a published graph as claimed in the caption but a home made cut and paste.

I was suspicious about the appearance of this graph but the fact that it was fig 57 and the caption clearly stated a paper ref as being the source gave the clear impression that this was a published PR graph.”

The data used in each and every figure of this series is sourced to the original peer-reviewed article where the data is presented. It is evident to anybody with a normal CI or above, that If I am comparing in most figures data from different sources, all of them credited, in order to do that I have made many of the graphs and figures myself.

Anybody with a problem with that can go to the original source and try to show if I have misrepresented its data. Of course they are entitled to have an opinion on the graphs, but if they fail to show any problem with the data, any attempt to take a moral scientific high ground on the way I make the figures is just ridicule and pathetic criticism and will be met with contempt. If the only thing they can say is that the figure is not as it was published, yet the data is, that’s a petty quibble.

The very existence of the Grand Maximum is not questioned by others I think… This indicates that even in the “corrected” sunspot series the Grand Maximum is observed as a period of clustering of several consecutive high cycles, even though the height of the cycles is not unique. ~Usoskin

I see the admission by Usoskin that the height of the cycles is not unique, as an admission that his former position that the modern grand maximum represents a period of unusual activity not seen in thousands of years was incorrect.

Extraordinary claims, like those that the present situation is highly unusual within a multi-millennial time scale, require extraordinary evidence. So far only the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has passed that test. Neither temperatures, nor solar activity have enough evidence to claim they are extraordinary.

Surely, even if not a unique event over the past 11 millennia, the fact that the Grand Maximum over last half of the 20th century, “is rare but not unique on the time scale of the Holocene,” still is of significance. “Several similar Grand Maxima (about 20) took place over the last 11 millennia,” says Usoskin, “thus one per about 500 years. Therefore, the Grand Maximum in the 20th century is not a unique event but a rare event.”

Unlike Grand Minima, that in most cases have always been clearly identified, and named, Grand Maxima suffer from problems of definition and identification, compounded by the use of different solar activity reconstructions that differ most precisely on this issue.

This is a table from two articles where the identification of grand solar maxima and minima is attempted, Usoskin et al., 2007, and Inceoglu et al., 2015, both in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

They cover different periods, as Inceoglu starts in 6600 BC and ends in 1650 AD, thus avoiding the issue of the modern maximum. I have highlighted the coincidences, and it is clear that there are not that many.

Back to back solar maxima do exist in both tables.

In principle I would expect that solar activity during the 21st century should not be very different from solar activity during the 20th. However it is not clear that we have correctly identified all the periodicities that matter, some periodicities display variable behavior, and there are solar changes not easily attributable to periodicities, so I would consider it a working hypothesis, and not a prediction.

What is clear to me is that there is little basis in past solar behavior to predict a 21st century grand solar minimum, so I am really surprised so many people are predicting one even in published articles. Perhaps it can be attributed to our natural catastrophic inclination. We are always expecting a catastrophe and very surprised it hasn’t arrived yet. Global warming also fits that category.

You seem to forget the Gleissberg Minimum, that was named by McCracken and defined as 1879-1914. SC14 had lower activity than SC24, and SC16 after this minimum is similar. So far the 20th century has a period with lower solar activity than anything we have seen in the 21st.

If that is your belief then you should not be asserting that there will be no GSM for the next few hundred years. This minimum is certain to continue into SC25, on that basis 21st century activity would be slightly lower than the 20th. Though I am also seeing another minimum starting from the 2090’s.

Ulric,
I really have a problem with you attributing things to me that I have not said.
You say:“you should not be asserting that there will be no GSM for the next few hundred years.”
While what I have said just above is:“I would consider it a working hypothesis, and not a prediction.”
This has happened several times as you try to fight strawman arguments.
So I am going to ask you please that you quote my exact words. That is if you want an answer from me.

Remember that the sun is variable and so far unpredictable. All we have are hypotheses. Those that make nearby predictions like the one from David Archibald, can quickly be shown wrong. The ones that only make distant predictions, like yours and mine, can only be judged on how well they explain the past and will remain untested long after we have passed away.

The advantage of my approach is that I arrive to solar variability not from the cosmogenic data, or some astronomical model, but from the climate side. So I already know the periods I am studying had undergone important climate change, and thus if they present relevant solar activity variability, the match is already established. This approach has been used for example by Michael Magny, that arrived to solar variability from his climatic studies. It is very powerful as he has demonstrated with his studies on Central Europe precipitation and lake levels during the Holocene.

You said:
“It can be expected that the low of ~ 2095 AD should barely be noticeable.”
and later said:
“It is unlikely that a solar grand minimum takes place within the next 300-400 years. And these are really good news.”
and:
“If you have a reason to be concerned is because your model is probably wrong if it expects a strong minimum towards the end of the century.”
and:
“whoever expects a solar grand minimum, or lower than present solar activity for the next 200 years, is very likely to be wrong.”
and you more recently said:
“I would consider it a working hypothesis, and not a prediction.”

That’s a change of tune I suppose.

“The advantage of my approach is that I arrive to solar variability not from the cosmogenic data, or some astronomical model, but from the climate side. So I already know the periods I am studying had undergone important climate change, and thus if they present relevant solar activity variability, the match is already established”

Well I correlate past climate data to the astronomical model to verify solar minima and grand solar minima. I don’t do it blind and just imagine it was cold.

Again you seem to be quite selective. I have also said:“it is not clear that we have correctly identified all the periodicities that matter, some periodicities display variable behavior, and there are solar changes not easily attributable to periodicities”

Long solar cycles (200-2500 years) are not favorable to produce a deep minimum in the next few centuries. I disagree with those like you that predict a deep minimum in the 21st century based on cycles. I think you are incorrectly interpreting the evidence to identify the relevant periodicities and their amplitudes.

But unlike you I understand that our knowledge of solar variability is tremendously poor, and therefore our predictions have very low confidence. My main point is that a deep minimum in the 21st century cannot be predicted based on solar cycles, not that a deep minimum cannot take place. Nobody knows what the solar activity is going to be in the future.

“I disagree with those like you that predict a deep minimum in the 21st century based on cycles.”

You are basing your outlook on cycles, I am not. The long minimum starts very late this century, and so is mostly in the 22nd century. Long ones can tend to go deeper yes.

“I think you are incorrectly interpreting the evidence to identify the relevant periodicities and their amplitudes.”

The model plots solar minima and grand solar minima where they actually occur. A regular cycle or periodicity can never do that, as they are not regular. I haven’t even mentioned amplitude, that is cycle talk. I reckon you are doing what you say you think I am doing.

“But unlike you I understand that our knowledge of solar variability is tremendously poor, and therefore our predictions have very low confidence.”

Standard solar science cannot predict any further ahead than the next cycle, that is well known. Though standard solar science is caught in a similar false paradigm of internal variability that climate science is.

“My main point is that a deep minimum in the 21st century cannot be predicted based on solar cycles, not that a deep minimum cannot take place.”

With hindcasts that don’t miss a beat however out of time, of course they can be forecast.

You are basing your outlook on an astronomical cycle, which is even worse because to date nobody has been able to demonstrate that the movements of the planets can affect solar activity (or climate) at all.

As you look for astronomical coincidences with what for most scientists are unconnected phenomena (planetary conjunctions and solar activity), the distinction between what you do and astrology appears blurred to me.

“As you look for astronomical coincidences with what for most scientists are unconnected phenomena (planetary conjunctions and solar activity), the distinction between what you do and astrology appears blurred to me.”

Says the person that cited Scafetta, hard to get lower than that. The progression that I have identified without doubt orders each sunspot maximum, and it orders the occurrence of solar minima and determines their duration. And it naturally offers the best clues to the nature of the mechanisms. You would have a much harder time proving your case to most scientists as its mostly speculation rather than observation.

“to date nobody has been able to demonstrate that the movements of the planets can affect solar activity (or climate) at all.”

In fact Kepler first found his fame doing such by making predictions at the scale of weather. I have been developing long range solar based weekly scale NAO/AO forecasts since 2008, with a huge quantity of rule based hindcasts through CET.

Do you think citing somebody means sharing all his views? I’ve got some news for you. As a scientist I cite articles that show evidence or support an argument I am making. If you only cite articles that agree with your views you must use very few citations.

You would have a much harder time proving your case to most scientists as its mostly speculation rather than observation.

Again you don’t understand. I don’t need to convince anybody or prove any case because I don’t do original research on climate. I am just connecting the dots from published evidence. The ones that do the research and make a case are the original climate scientists that did the research.

You are unlikely to get your model published, much less accepted. The evidence I present has already been published and it is being cited. That is a significant difference.

“As a scientist I cite articles that show evidence or support an argument I am making.”

The argument that you were last making was that Bray and not Eddy would weaken de Vries etc through the following centuries, so Scafetta’s ‘pseudo beat astrology’ was off point.

“I am just connecting the dots from published evidence.”

Yes with an imaginary sine wave that reduces the ‘centennial cycle’ except when it doesn’t. There are periodic and quasi-periodic events, but there are no long term sinusoidal cycles in solar activity levels. It’s pure fantasy.

There is a real synodic period of 953 years that follows the warm spikes in GISP2 at say 1250 BC, 2203 BC, 3156 BC, 4109 BC, 5062 BC, and 6015 BC, far better than at 983 years. I wouldn’t claim it was driving it though until I was sure.

I wasn’t talking about the last 4000 years. I made no mention of it continuing forward from 1200 BC, and would not expect it to, as the 953 year pattern breaks down once every 4627 years. I can certainly show where through the 953 year pattern certain configurations have driven extreme seasonal events, such as the winters when the Nile froze in 829 and 1010 AD, and 953 years later at the same heliocentric configuration type, the very cold winters of 1784 and 1963. I can do the same for warm events. I have even identified a logic that says why each given configuration should produce a cold or a warm event, and as with the rules of the progression ordering the sunspot cycles, it involves heliocentric quadratures. The 953 pattern could be driving the peaks in GISP2 that I noted above, I don’t know yet, but I’ll stick to my claim that it follows their pitch far better than 983 years, let alone 1139 years, and that it is real.

According to what? The challenge is to make sense of why the progression closely orders each sunspot cycle maximum, with zero drift over 400 years, and each solar minimum every ~70-130 years, where it occurs, with zero drift over thousands of years. You give up too easily.

“And second because when your model disagrees with the cosmogenic isotopes data you doubt the data.”

It agrees with weather records and finer resolution climate proxy data very accurately. Which of course is what really matters. It even shows that Sporer was two separate solar minima and not one.

“And you have an impossible task ahead if you are trying to prove that reduced solar activity did it (much less a planetary conjunction).”

I have identified a logic for all syzygy-quadrature Jovian configurations, that shows why such cold events occurred at 829, 1010, 1784 and 1963, and at every other occasion that configuration occurred, e.g. 1601-1602. And a logic to which months the cold event would occur according to the positions of the dominant inferior planets relative to the Jovians. The logic predicts which other types of Jovian configurations will cause cold events, and which will produce hot events. Much of the task is done. While you have an impossible task proving a solar cause to your Eddy cycle, least all by citing Scafetta.

I have identified a logic for all syzygy-quadrature Jovian configurations, that shows why such cold events occurred at 829, 1010, 1784 and 1963, and at every other occasion that configuration occurred, e.g. 1601-1602. And a logic to which months the cold event would occur according to the positions of the dominant inferior bodies relative to the Jovians. The logic predicts which other types of Jovian configurations will cause cold events, and which will produce hot events. Much of the task is done. While you have an impossible task proving a solar cause to your Eddy cycle, least of all by citing Scafetta.

Ok. Let’s do this one by one. Some people don’t appear to distinguish between IntCal13, a calibration curve, and solar activity reconstructions. Solar activity reconstructions include several assumptions about the relationship between cosmogenic isotopes production and deposition rates, and solar activity. The IntCal13 calibration curve is not related to climate or solar activity, and is based on the amount of 14C found at each tree ring (or speleothem growth) with the goal of being able to date ancient biological materials.

Big deviations from linearity in the IntCal13 calibration curve are not too common. A subset of them displays an interesting regularity:

This regularity is quite good for a solar cycle, a lot better than for the non-controversial Schwabe cycle. It defines a 2400-2500 year cycle, not 2300. The missing B4 causes a problem and is one of the reasons numerical analyses sometimes produce shorter cycles, as they tend to pick lows at 7,300 and 8,200 BP that don’t belong to this periodicity. Few signal analyses can correctly work with missing periods at the same time other similar periodicities are present. But we know between 1640-1700 AD several Schwabe cycles were undetectable in sunspots, so we should not be surprised B4 is missing. The article above deals with this problem.

Whoever wants to propose a different (shorter) Bray (aka Hallstatt) cycle will have to correctly identify its lows. Good luck with that. Picking the Maunder lower at 300 BP instead of the 500 BP low would only make the cycle longer, not shorter.

Another criticism is the width of your so called windows B1-B6. The window size looks to be around 180 years which is not nearly enough to cover a cluster of solar grand minima. A time span of around 500-600 years would be more accurate and not allow the cherry picking of single grand minima to suit your needs.

Overall this study is far from convincing and would fail any reasonable test of peer review.

Trying to decipher clusters of solar grand minima from a calibration curve is ludicrous.

You are not acquainted with the relevant bibliography on an issue you claim to be an expert.

“Aims. This study aims to improve our understanding of the occurrence and origin of grand solar maxima and minima. Methods. We first investigate the statistics of peaks and dips simultaneously occurring in the solar modulation potentials reconstructed using the Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) 10Be and IntCal13 14C records for the overlapping time period spanning between ∼1650 AD to 6600 BC. Based on the distribution of these events, we propose a method to identify grand minima and maxima periods.”

Usoskin (2017) gives a conservative list of 25 SGM that were identified in previous studies by different researchers for the past 11,500 years. There is a notable coincidence. Since the Eddy cycle is so close to one thousand years, all the lows of the cycle take place at ~ X,300 yr BP, with X being every millennia of the Holocene. We can observe in the list of SGM that 15 of them take place at ~ X,300 ± 80 yr BP.

Do you start to see a pattern here? The distribution of SGM over the Holocene is not random. Most of those SGM coincide with Bond events, interpreted as periods of significant climate change when the North Atlantic experienced a great increase in icebergs.

The next date for that periodicity is 2650 AD. If past is prologue a SGM could start ~ 2600 AD.

Javier, are there any good estimates of the temperatures at each of those solar minimums going back into the holocene? What kind of temperatures could we reasonably expect relative to the LIA come 2650? (assuming agw isn’t a factor in all this)…

What kind of temperatures could we reasonably expect relative to the LIA come 2650? (assuming agw isn’t a factor in all this)

There are no good estimates. If we talk exclusively about proxy temperatures and not instrumental temperatures I think we can get a ballpark estimate. Instruments just give too much variability, like 0.4-0.5°C warming due to a big El Niño for one year or two, that would probably be unnoticeable by proxies.

But most of that fall is due to the Milankovitch decrease in insolation, and a small part could be due to volcanic activity, and the coincidence with the Eddy cycle and the 1500 year cycle.

Comparing the LIA cooling with the cooling at other Bray lows, and considering all these factors, I come up with a global cooling attributable to the Bray low decrease in solar activity of about 0.3-0.4°C. This value compares well with the cooling attributable to the 2500-yr periodicity in the tropical Pacific by:
Khider, D., Jackson, C. S., & Stott, L. D. (2014). Assessing millennial‐scale variability during the Holocene: A perspective from the western tropical Pacific. Paleoceanography, 29(3), 143-159.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013PA002534/full
which is reassuring.

The cooling at the North Atlantic area, Eastern North America, Western Europe, and Central Asia should be significantly higher. Maybe up to 0.8°C.

The question is that temperatures at the millennial scale are determined by Milankovitch forcing. Temperatures at the LIA were lower and temperatures now are higher than what Milankovitch determines. Over the next millennium I would expect temperatures to naturally decline towards their Milankovitch level, and when the Bray low arrives it will detract 0.3-0.4°C from that, and temperatures should get even colder than the LIA in the fifth millennium AD, probably producing the glacial inception.

The Eddy cycle is highly variable, as we will see. The climatic effect is less clear than for the Bray cycle, so less cooling should be expected. Perhaps around 0.2° global cooling. I don’t think in the 27th century temperatures will get nearly as cold as during the LIA, even if the Eddy cycle low produces one or two SGM. Perhaps we will get back to the situation around 1900.

Only one that breaks down. 1250-1200 BC was a profoundly cold period, 2250-2200 BC was cold, as was around 3200 BC, and all are warm on GISP2. But 5200 BC and 6200 BC are the complete reverse and cold on GISP2. Two steps forward from 1250-1200 BC is the early MWP according to several proxies, with one of the largest known solar peaks at 775 AD.

My model shows a very short minimum centered around 2650 AD, just a couple of weaker cycles. I don’t see why the stark differences on GISP2 that I noted would be irrelevant. The 8.2 kyr event even has increased trade winds at its peak, the wrong sign for a solar minimum.

I don’t see why the stark differences on GISP2 that I noted would be irrelevant.

They are irrelevant to determine past solar activity and the position of SGM. We detect changes in solar activity through solar proxies, mainly 14C and 10Be. 18O won’t tell us anything about solar activity. GISP2 18O spikes have not been demonstrated to be related to solar activity. Have you tried a cross-correlation of GISP2 with the cosmogenic isotopes data?

The 8.2 kyr event even has increased trade winds at its peak, the wrong sign for a solar minimum.

The grand solar minimum at 8335 BP (Sahel) is detected in both 14C and 10Be, and the 8.2 kyr event is compounded by the Lake Agassiz outbreak. You cannot dismiss the existence of a SGM based on a climate proxy that might be affected by other factors. And the Sahel SGM fits a 12,000 years long, 980 years spaced series of SGM. The cosmogenic isotopes data and the 12 kyr long series trump your climate proxy.

I find it really surprising and quite telling that you would rely on GISP2 to determine solar activity.

“The combined effect of the global cooling due to this solar low with the regional or hemispheric abrupt cooling from the Lakes Agassiz and Ojibway event is what made this period between 8.4 and 7.9 kyr BP suffer the most abrupt temperature drop of the Holocene, at least in the North Atlantic region.”

Baffin Island Main Advance 8290 ± 170 BP, that roughly agrees with GISP2.http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/holobib.html
That must have been some strongly positive NAO conditions, no wonder villages near the Isle of Wight England were growing wheat 8200 years ago. That explains the increased trade winds.

Is full packed with evidence. Do you have anything published to contradict it?

An important indicator is a huge drop of 100 ppb CH4, which is the gas that shows a closest agreement with temperature changes in ice cores. CH4 is produced by biological sources that respond to temperature.

“In contrast, a single sharp anomaly at 8.25–8.1 kyr BP in the greyscale record reflects enhanced intensities of the
trade winds.”
That strongly contradicts a solar minimum.
Crag cave and the Aegean Sea both shift warmer at 8.2 kyr. Hoti cave shows the drier periods either side of 8.2 kyr, the latter by 250 years.

An ancient solar minimum is defined by an increase in the production of cosmogenic isotopes, not by trade winds in the earth. You can obviusly change the definition to your liking but then your science is only valid to you.

All Holocene solar minima will be characterised by increased negative NAO, which means slower trade winds.

Even if that was true, you can’t define or refute grand minima based on NAO and trade winds. Grand minima are defined on the basis of cosmogenic isotopes production.

You cannot say that a grand minimum is not real because trade winds were too strong and expect to be taken seriously. Grand minima occur over hugely different climatic conditions, like a glacial period, or a Holocene Climatic Optimum, or a Neoglacial period. Some of the climatic effects are likely to be different, because the earth is in a different state.

“Even if that was true, you can’t define or refute grand minima based on NAO and trade winds.”

I don’t see why not.

“Grand minima are defined on the basis of cosmogenic isotopes production.”

It’s a very crude measure that misses some solar minima altogether. Like the latter solar minimum in what is called Sporer, from 1550 onward, and solar minima in the early 1100’s and early 1200’s. and the early Antique LIA from ~350 AD.http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7012/fig_tab/nature02995_F2.html?foxtrotcallback=true
A solar minimum is well defined by a sharp increase in -NAO conditions. I don’t even think GCR’s are important, the evidence I see is that weaker solar wind increases negative NAO, regardless of the GCR’s.

“You cannot say that a grand minimum is not real because trade winds were too strong and expect to be taken seriously.”

Not by you apparently. With increased -NAO they would be slower.

“Grand minima occur over hugely different climatic conditions, like a glacial period, or a Holocene Climatic Optimum, or a Neoglacial period. Some of the climatic effects are likely to be different, because the earth is in a different state.”

I would argue it’s more to do with weaker plasma than lower irradiance, nevertheless:
‘Solar Forcing of Regional Climate Change During the Maunder Minimum’
“We examine the climate response to solar irradiance changes between the late 17th-century Maunder Minimum and the late 18th century. Global average temperature changes are small (about 0.3° to 0.4°C) in both a climate model and empirical reconstructions. However, regional temperature changes are quite large. In the model, these occur primarily through a forced shift toward the low index state of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation as solar irradiance decreases. This leads to colder temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere continents, especially in winter (1° to 2°C), in agreement with historical records and proxy data for surface temperatures.”http://science.sciencemag.org/content/294/5549/2149

“An indication of the state of the NAO in earlier times can also be inferred from documentary data.Wanner et al. (1995) combined documentary information from the Euro-Climhist database with a variety of early instrumental (temperature, pressure and rainfall) and tree-ring data to examine the state of the North Atlantic circulation during the Late Maunder Minimum (LMM). The results indicated that during the 1675–1704 period the winter and spring seasons were characterized by strong reversals of MSLP that were akin to the extreme NAO phase described by Moses et al. (1987).”https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/pubs/thesis/2010-cornes/Master_withlinks.pdf

That’s not the same as saying that:A solar minimum is well defined by a sharp increase in -NAO conditions. I don’t even think GCR’s are important
I guess you don’t see the difference. In one case they model and hypothesize a forced shift towards NAO- conditions. In the other you claim that a sharp increase in NAO- conditions defines a solar minimum regardless of cosmogenic isotopes.

Again, is there anyone else in this planet that has said the same in a scientific publication? or are you the only person that thinks so?

In fact they claimed negative NAO on the basis of ‘historical records and proxy data for surface temperatures’.
Wanner et al. (1995) combined documentary information from the Euro-Climhist database with a variety of early instrumental (temperature, pressure and rainfall) and tree-ring data to examine the state of the North Atlantic circulation during the Late Maunder Minimum (LMM).

Nobody else in the world states that a solar minimum can be defined by a sharp increase in NAO- conditions regardless of 14C or 10Be. Your conjectures about the absence of a grand minimum at 8.3 kyr BP lack credibility except to yourself.

Since I am not a climate scientist, I rely on the work and evidence produced and published by specialist scientists that have dedicated a great deal of time, work, and knowledge to their professional output. Since you are an amateur, and you are obviously espoused to your conjectures and models, and thus heavily biased, there is no way I am going to be convinced by you. You should try first to convince real specialists that your work has merit enough to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Nicola Scafetta, that you criticize so heavily is a very prolific author that has no problem in getting his work published (yes, planetary theories are regularly published). That, to my eyes, places him way above you, and his work way above yours.

Unlike you, I have no skin here. I just tell things as I see them from the scientific literature. If new evidence comes available that changes the views expressed here, I have absolutely no problem in changing them, or even making a 180°. It would not be the first time. My only goal is to keep current with a field that interests me, and try to understand what the available evidence really says about climate change. And since I am a scientist, I am only interested on what the evidence shows, not on what other scientists views are. I know scientists’ opinions are no different to other people’s opinions. Worth the same proverbial 2 cents.

“Nicola Scafetta, that you criticize so heavily is a very prolific author that has no problem in getting his work published (yes, planetary theories are regularly published). That, to my eyes, places him way above you, and his work way above yours.”

It is proper for scientists in the same field to criticise each others work.
I have managed to describe the ordering of sunspot cycle maxima and solar minima, where they really occur, in just one short paragraph. You seemed to be more concerned about the window dressing than the goods.

“Nicola Scafetta, that you criticize so heavily is a very prolific author that has no problem in getting his work published (…..). That, to my eyes, places him way above you, and his work way above yours.”

It is proper for scientists in the same field to criticise each others work.
I have managed to describe the precise ordering of sunspot cycle maxima and solar minima, where they really occur, in just one short paragraph. You seemed to be more concerned about the window dressing than the goods.

“Spectral Irradiance Monitor satellite measurements indicate that variations in solar ultraviolet irradiance may be larger than previously thought. Here we drive an ocean–atmosphere climate model with ultraviolet irradiance variations based on these observations. We find that the model responds to the solar minimum with patterns in surface pressure and temperature that resemble the negative phase of the North Atlantic or Arctic Oscillation, of similar magnitude to observations. In our model, the anomalies descend through the depth of the extratropical winter atmosphere. If the updated measurements of solar ultraviolet irradiance are correct, low solar activity, as observed during recent years, drives cold winters in northern Europe and the United States, and mild winters over southern Europe and Canada, with little direct change in globally averaged temperature. [6]”http://euanmearns.com/bond-cycles-and-the-role-of-the-sun-in-shaping-climate/

“Whereas in the instrumental record the precipitation evolves similarly in both regions and opposite to the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) index, the coldest periods of the LIA shows a contrasting pattern with drier conditions in the South of Spain and wetter in Northern Africa. We suggest an extreme negative NAO conditions, accompanied by a southward excursion of the winter rainfall band beyond that observed in the last century, can explain this contrast.”https://www.clim-past-discuss.net/7/4149/2011/cpd-7-4149-2011-print.pdf

On second thought, I don’t think I understood your comment the first time. Part C is about the physical basis on how the Bray cycle might affect climate.

Truth is there is zero evidence on what might produce solar cycles. The current solar dynamo theory has no explanation for them. Planetary hypotheses have a complete absence of evidence and lack a credible physical model (based on known physics and with numbers) on how they could affect solar activity.

One of the planetary hypotheses could be correct, but all the rest need to be false, and alternatively all could be false. We have no way of knowing. That’s why planetary hypotheses fail to garner acceptance.

Personally I find it more credible that something outside the sun is responsible, rather than an internal mechanism, but it is a tough cookie as the sun is in free fall.

Since the issue is so open and without evidence I find no use in researching it, although I have read some of the articles. A breakthrough is needed and it could take generations as scientists with a genius mind are rare and usually run away from these type of career destroying subfields as they are also smart.

I have presented evidence for the apparent ordering of sunspot cycle maxima and of solar minima. The trick is to first find the right correlations, which then can point to the right physics.
Starting with the premise of a gravitationally based mechanism is a guarantee of never finding the right correlations.

There remains the wicked problem of teasing out a plausible and robust Solar external mechanism that is proposed to be working as an Earthly temperature control knob given that it is emminating from a comparably stable Sun onto an intrinsicly highly variable Earth equipped with a very large heat sink and evaporator working in concert with a highly variable atmosphere to create its own short and long term temperature trends.

Wriggle matching between two not fully understood systems is a leap too soon. We likely know more about the Sun and its intrinsic variability than we do the Earth and its intrinsic variability. We should be on about studying Earth, especially its large heat sink and evaporator, and the teleconnections it has with our atmosphere. But that endeavor was cut short by the minutia of human sourced atmospheric CO2.

In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’

It is an ‘isolated’ system – immense, complex and powerful. Energy input changes are relatively minor – insufficient to cause the changes in climate observed. Although tending to equilibrium – primarily in the Planck response – and thus to maximum entropy – internal variability results in large changes in albedo that modulates the Earth’s enery dynamic. Moreover, the Earth system is subject to regimes as the complex and dynamic system shifts from one chaotic state space to another in abrupt climate shifts.

“What defines a climate change as abrupt? Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.” https://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/3#14

One cannot get a one to one correspondence between climate and solar variability. Internal variation is missing from Javier’s very old fashioned cylomania.

“Very very few observed physical processes are not cyclical. There is a very simple reason for this. Any process that is not cyclical will be finite in duration, and our chance of being alive at that same time to observe it is vanishingly small.

Very few things in life are so simple they can be predicted successfully from first principles. Thus the IPCC calls climate models projections. We can’t even predict the ocean tides from first principles.

If one truly wants to predict the future for complex systems, one has no alternative but to first discover the underlying cycles in the observed process. Since cycles repeat, this provides reliable prediction for the future. This is how we solved the ocean tides.

The term “Cyclomania” is a logical fallacy. You are trying to discredit a technique that has worked repeatedly throughout history by the use of name calling.

You direct me to a comment on a website? Thanks for the early morning belly laugh.

WUWT is not a site I think much of. I did catch the headline of this particular article when I clicked your link. An IT expert critiques climate models? I have been using hydrodynamic models for 30 years. This sort of nonsense reinforces my opinion of WUWT.

But what you are talking about are not cycles but regime change in a complex and dynamic system. Theory suggests that the system is pushed by greenhouse gas changes and warming – as well as solar intensity and Earth orbital variations – past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation.

I credited a comment that I subscribe and that it is a fantastic response to your ignorance of climate periodicities. An approach that has been very successful in the past, unlike your delusional idea of thresholds and chaotic interactions that will get you nowhere. Milankovitch already gave a very good response to those that defended that the climate did not operate in cycles. Some seem not to have learned that lesson yet.

The investigation of periodicities in a complex phenomenon is a well established scientific method. You ignore at your peril of not understanding anything.

“What defines a climate change as abrupt? Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.” https://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/3#14

The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain. If we have a better paradigm – we are that much more able to understand the potential for change in the system.

I think you are an inflexible pedant with impossibly old fashioned ideas. I cannot be bothered talking to you – you will run out of steam without having a single new idea. The only reason I commented was that Pamela’s comment was perspicacious in ways you cannot appreciate. And you give me fredberble?

From Benny Peiser (GWPF) Newsletter
“U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is considering a former official in President Barack Obama’s Energy Department to lead the agency’s debate on mainstream climate science, according to a former leader of the Trump administration’s EPA transition effort. Steve Koonin, a physicist and director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, is being eyed to lead EPA’s “red team, blue team” review of climate science, said Myron Ebell, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a Trump transition leader. When reached by phone, Koonin declined to comment on whether he was in talks with the administration about the climate job. But he added, “I think it would be a good idea if that kind of exercise took place.” –Hannah Northey,” Science Magazine, 24 July 2017 http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/epa-eyes-former-obama-energy-official-lead-climate-science-review

Who is Steven Koonin? What is his view of CAGW? Is he truly agnostice, unbiased, objective, or is he a CAGW alarmist?

The Sun as climate driver is repeatedly discussed in the literature but proofs are often weak. In order to elucidate the solar influence, we have used a large number of temperature proxies worldwide to construct a global temperature mean G7 over the last 2000 years. The Fourier spectrum of G7 shows the strongest components as ~1000-, ~460-, and ~190 – year periods whereas other cycles of the individual proxies are considerably weaker. The G7 temperature extrema coincide with the Roman, medieval, and present optima as well as the well-known minimum of AD 1450 during the Little Ice Age. We note that the temperature increase of the late 19th and 20th century is represented by the harmonic temperature representation, and thus is of pure multiperiodic nature. It can be expected that the periodicity of G7, lasting 2000 years so far, will persist also for the foreseeable future. It predicts a temperature drop from present to AD 2050, a slight rise from 2050 to 2130, and a further drop from AD 2130 to 2200. –Horst-Joachim Lüdecke and Carl-Otto Weiss, The Open Atmospheric Science Journal (11) 2017.https://benthamopen.com/FULLTEXT/TOASCJ-11-44